WORLD> America
Investigation begins in plane's NYC splash landing
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-16 23:58


A US Airways Airbus A320 airliner floats down the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey (back) after making an emergency landing in the river after taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport, January 15, 2009. [Agencies]  

Then came an ominous warning from the captain: "Brace for impact because we're going down," according to passenger Jeff Kolodjay, 31.

Some passengers prayed. Vallie Collins, 37, tapped out a text message to her husband, Steve: "My plane is crashing." For a desperate half-hour, he was unable to get in touch with her to learn that she had survived.

Onshore, from streets and office windows, witnesses watched the plane steadily descend off roughly 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

"I just thought, `Why is it so low?' And, splash, it hit the water," said Barbara Sambriski, a researcher at The Associated Press, who watched the water landing from the news organization's high-rise office.

The 150 passengers and five crew members were forced to escape as the plane quickly became submerged up to its windows in 36-degree water. Dozens stood on the aircraft's wings on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the winter, as commuter ferries and Coast Guard vessels converged to rescue them.

One ferry, the Thomas Jefferson of the company NY Waterway, arrived within minutes. Riders grabbed life vests and rope and tossed them to plane passengers in the water.

"They were cheering when we pulled up," Capt. Vincent Lombardi. "People were panicking. They said, 'Hurry up! Hurry up!'"

Two police scuba divers said they pulled a woman from a lifeboat "frightened out of her mind" and lethargic from hypothermia. Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs.

Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, many for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries, fire officials said. Some of the shivering survivors were swaddled in blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

The plane initially remained afloat but sank slowly as it drifted downriver. Gradually, only about half of the tail fin and rudder were above water. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the aircraft finally wound up near Battery Park, at the lower tip of Manhattan and about four miles from where the pilot ditched it.